Arcane Detective 3 (Patreon)

As I walked into the room, the smell of rotten meat and the other things grew thicker, so much that I wasn’t surprised to find two rotten bodies behind the doorway, the kind of rot that would only happen in a week or two. With the presence of two rotting bodies, it was easy to ignore the gaudy red and gold decorations of the room. 

Though saying that they looked better than a pair of smelling corpses was hardly a compliment.

 I took a step forward, passing next to dark, rich leather-covered chairs, and my feet sank into the thick, rust-colored shag of a carpet that wouldn’t be remiss in an Italian porn movie that was shot in the seventies, an impression that was further enhanced by the velvet velour curtains, thick enough to cut the sunlight completely. 

“You’re here again, you conman,” growled another familiar figure as I stepped inside, only to meet with a blonde woman, with glasses huge enough to cover half of her face. 

“You wound me by calling me with that ugly name, professor,” I said with a teasing tone as I looked at her, only to receive a scathing look back. Her name was Christiana Dewart. She wasn’t actually a professor, but one of the junior crime scene analysts. Her true ability was higher than her rank, but just like Detective Joanna, her rise had been limited both by her gender and her looks, and the connotation between being blonde and stupidity didn’t help. It was the reason for her huge ugly glasses despite having a near-perfect vision, trying to add some gravitas to her persona, though, why she hadn’t tried to die her hair to different color was another question. 

“If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck…” she growled. 

“How interesting,” I answered with a big smile. “But if you’re going to attack a magician, first you need to reveal their tricks. How about it, were you able to prove that the latest locked-room murder was done by someone sneaking through the air ducks like you claimed it was the case,” I said. 

Rather than answering, she just growled helplessly, but her lack of words was better than any kind of answer. 

“Stop flirting,” Detective Joanna cut off as she looked down at the bodies. I chuckled, while Maria exclaimed in anger to Joanna, who ignored her gaze. “I need to know how the hell two bodies could stay here undiscovered for almost two weeks.”

It was a good question, so I let my magic stretch and cover the surface of the bodies. As I tapped into my magic, my tenseness disappeared further. 

For a spellcaster, regardless of the tradition they had been trained, the level of strength they displayed, or the environment, not using their magic for an extended period was, without an exception, uncomfortable, though those factors would affect the speed of the build-up, and the ultimate intensity of the effect. 

And I was a sorcerer, which came from the old hermetic tradition, desiring to control the universe as much as possible, no matter the mana required. Which meant that any sorcerer, focused on developing their magical reserves and recovery to the limit. Meaning, even the weakest sorcerer would start feeling the effects of magical withdrawal quite a bit. 

And since I belonged to upper echelons even among the sorcerers, the sensation was even thicker for me, and the scarce magic field of the Earth hardly helped. If I hadn’t been born on Earth — something most of the council was unaware of thanks to my master — that scarcity would have made things even worse. 

Exile would have been truly a horrible punishment if I hadn’t the initiative to fight against low-level supernatural threats — and I was sure that those blue-blooded idiots in the council who never even put their clothes without the help of a servant never considered I would use the ancient charter to break their punishment.

It wasn’t surprising that they missed that. It was well out of their way of thinking. I had no doubt that some of them would prefer killing themselves out of pride instead of ‘shaming’ themselves by serving the natives of a distant dimension. 

I had a much more utilitarian approach to supposed exalted position sorcerers were supposed to hold, and wasn’t afraid of a bit of hard word. 

Admittedly, having two feisty police babes helping me in my investigation was a nice perk. 

The spell I was casting was neither difficult nor required a lot of focus, allowing me to get an easy result. “Are you ready to answer?” Joanna asked, her brunette hair flowing wildly as she swung her head angrily. “How the hell these corpses stayed there two weeks without being noticed.” 

“Simple,” I answered with a smirk that no doubt drove Christiana angry as she assumed I had been making light of the challenge she was facing. My answer didn’t do anything to reduce her annoyance. “They weren’t here two weeks ago.” 

“Nonsense,” Joanna burst before Christiana could even suppress her professional annoyance and retort. “You’re telling me that the killer went all the trouble of sneaking two bodies into a random hotel room for some reason, avoiding all the cameras and eye-witnesses in the process.” 

“No, that’s not what I’m saying, not that it’s as impossible as you think. They weren’t dead two weeks ago. They had been killed just hours ago.” 

“Nonsense,” Christiana said, echoing Joanna’s earlier words. “They are clearly in the late stages of decomposition. How could you even claim such nonsense with a straight face!” she said, her tone getting colder and colder with anger. She turned to her friend. “I don’t know why you’re even bothering to deal with this charlatan. We should just send him away and -” she continued, her anger getting more and more intense. 

“Hold your horses, sweetie,” I cut in. The diminutive nickname in the professional environment hardly helped her to suppress her anger. Seeing she took a deep breath, about to explode, I continued quickly. “How about a bet, if I lose, I’ll never come to another crime scene you’re handling?”

“What kind of bet?” she said with clear interest, no doubt her anger making her forget the previous cases I helped them to resolve. 

“Simple, you can work on the bodies as much as for the rest of the day. And if you can enough evidence other than their decomposed state to convince Joanna to file an official report about their time of death, it’ll be my loss.” 

“And what if you win?” she asked, even in anger, smart enough to realize the difficulty of the task. Due to her shaky position, Joanna was notoriously careful in making any written conclusion, rightfully aware that her enemies in the station would use any major mistake to marginalize her to a paper-pusher role.

“Not much, just a date where you’re obligated to stick around until the end, and actually try to be nice.” 

“If you think-” Christiana tried to say, only to be cut off by Joanna. 

“Enough, either accept or decline, but you need to start working. This is not a primary school.” 

Christiana did the smart thing and stopped speaking. But being silenced by her friend stifled her mood even more. Which worked to my benefit, because before starting to work on the bodies, she gave me a stiff nod, showing that she had accepted our bet. 

Which meant that there was nothing to do until they believed my conclusion about the time of death. I didn’t blame them for their reluctance. After all, I just stood there for a few seconds, and came to a wild conclusion. Joanna would have kicked me out there if it wasn’t for my previous successes. 

Being a detective was hard enough without adding people who claimed to have mysterious powers, but only trying to use their credentials as a consultant to rob gullible housewives of their divorce settlements — an opinion that more than one police officer shared with me without prompting, disturbing me with their annoying nasal voice. 

Just like that, I left the hotel — quite happy to get away from the disgustingly gaudy decorations — and started walking back to my office. Unfortunately, leaving the scene of the crime didn’t mean that I could leave the crime itself as well. I hadn’t bothered to talk with the Detective, as it would have broken through her already stretched suspension of disbelief, but the victims had been killed directly by magic. 

And to make it even more fun, not only the magic that had been used was the kind that would send chills to any sane spell caster. It wasn’t the worst of the worst, but considering the limitless nature of the magic for evil, the dark nature of the murders was still unsettling. 

Especially since whoever killed them went through the trouble of draining their life energy completely. Even though it was a disgusting act, enough to distort the nature of the caster for eternity, many did so, because it was enjoyed as a delicacy by many creatures, though none of those creatures belonged to the cuddly category. 

Vampires, for example, were by far the most innocent ones in that category, which was enough to explain the nature of the list. 

I decided to be more proactive in resolving the issue, before the idiot who decided to dabble with the dark magic did something stupid and contacted one of the more dangerous species on the list, some of them enough to invade Earth in less than twenty-four hours. 

I didn’t want my homeland to be ruined. 

But my plans of immediately starting on it were aborted when I returned to my office, only to realize I wasn’t alone…